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by
Dennis Clark

Well, the Christmas season has come and gone, and it appears that Santa was good
to many of you robot builders out there since I’ve
been getting some interesting questions. So, let’s
get started!

Q. Regarding the October 2008 Zombie.zip article on the R/C receiver decoder. I found the referenced implementation of a
“tank-like” RC decoder very elegant and would like
to try it out myself.

1) Please elaborate on the minimum support PIC
hardware that I will need to implement your R/C
decoder solution (i.e., in detail what development
platform was used for the PIC 18F252).

2) Please elaborate on where I can obtain the
support software (i.e., CCS PCH compiler).

3) Can this solution be ported to the PIC 16 series
or is the interrupt structure that you used the
reason you chose to upgrade to the PIC 18
series of processors?

4) Are there any other articles or reference
information that will assist me in testing out
this solution? Many thanks.

— Stephen

A. That project was very minimal and I also felt elegant; thank you for noticing. I used the 18F252 just because it is a
popular, all-around useful mid-range PIC. This
project is pretty small code-wise, so one could go
as small as the 18F2220 and have everything that
I like in a chip — namely two PWM channels and a
USART for debugging. This part is a little cheaper
than the 18F252, as well.

You can get the CCS PCH compiler from
Custom Computer Services, Inc.; their website is
www.ccsinfo.com. They have a variety of
reasonably priced compilers for the various PIC
microcontrollers. PCH will integrate into the
Microchip MPLAB IDE seamlessly.